LEAP OF FAITH

Nearly two decades after the George W. Bush administration’s
decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, a political scientist and
strategist assesses the many flaws in that plan—and the planners.

In this riveting study, Mazarr (Unmodern Men in the Modern
World: Radical Islam, Terrorism, and the War on Modernity, 2007, etc.),
associate director of the Strategy and Doctrine Program at the Arroyo Center at
the Rand Corporation, sees the ill-fated lunge into war—from the president’s
hysterical response to 9/11 to the inability of his senior policy staff to
glean the real warnings and risks of failure in the invasion—as less of a
nefarious plot to deceive the nation and more of a badly misplaced expression
of missionary zeal. The author systematically reviews the criteria of liability
for legal negligence by government decision-makers in leading the nation into a
costly, senseless war, and he notes how in nearly every instance, they failed
in their tasks. Bush’s heedless decision to initiate a “global war on terror”
was regarded as a “God-given mission” while he continued to “scoff at deep
analysis.” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld arrogantly “did not ensure an
adequate consideration of the postwar” issues. National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice was often sidelined by senior officials and failed to “take
the bold actions” to convince the president of serious planning flaws.
Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell simply “had his orders,” and Gen. Tommy
Franks assured the president that the military leadership “had a plan” to get
in and out quickly, and that “he had the postwar security situation all sewn
up.” Mazarr also takes to task members of Congress for lack of due diligence in
unearthing “evidence of a brewing fiasco” and the media for failing in its job
of providing a check on government power and not “bothering to do much
investigation,” especially regarding Hussein’s ostensible possession of nuclear
weapons.

An excellent, cleareyed study that does not look for villains
but rather lessons for a possible future situation in which “a government is in
thrall to a moralistic sense of rightness.”